Cowboys & Indians
by Minisinoo
Summary: Lessons on the road in a journey through time. Existentialism, a Texas pow-wow, a '67 Mustang, a bar brawl, Pocahontas, and Jack Kerouac. Sometimes, family is chosen, even if they're not who we expect. Jasper, Leah & Seth, Edward
1. But It's Not in Order

**This Story is not a Western**

This story is not a Western. Even if it has cowboys and Indians. No, it's a road trip across the plains with a pretty Mustang and nobody wears a black hat - or a white one. (Jasper's is brown.)

It begins, of course, with a quarrel. It ends at a graveside in Texas. But it's not in order, because that's not always the best way to tell a story. In between, we have existential philosophy, a stray tornado, Achilles and Pocahontas, a pow-wow, a few history lessons and a kidnapped, brooding groom. Oh, and a thrown punch that starts a bar brawl. (Because even if it's not a Western, every good story needs at least one bar brawl.)

That it involves two vampires and two werewolves is somewhat less important.

* * *

**1. But It's Not in Order**

They are headed south on I-29, half an hour outside St. Joseph on the Missouri side of the river. "A stop on the Historical Lewis and Clark Highway" says a brown sign. "Founded in 1843" says another, and he blinks. The city is as old as he is.

But Jasper isn't really thinking about Lewis and Clark, or his age. He's thinking about stopping at this St. Joe Boot Company he keeps seeing advertised on billboards, because he wants a new pair of Tony Lamas. His old ones are looking a tad beat-up. Then again - and whatever Alice thinks - no self-respecting boots bear no scuff marks. "I need me some new boots," he says abruptly. In the rearview mirror, he can see Edward grimace. Only Italian leather loafers grace Edward's toes, unless he's hiking or playing baseball. Jasper is sure Edward considers boots "uncouth," which is all the more reason to drag him into a boot shop.

Leah looks over from where she rides shotgun. The window is down, blowing her hair, although most of it is caught up in a ponytail. She says nothing, just lifts one leg to prop her booted foot against the wing glass. She grins. He grins back. In the seat behind, her brother has his head out the window, looking for all the world like an over-excited puppy, which has more to do with the fact he's 14 than with his unexpected genetic mutation. Or maybe he's just trying to get away from the scent of vampire, which is why the windows are down in the first place. Jasper and Edward are no more pleased by the hot, wet-dog smell of two werewolves than Leah and Seth are by the sweet, overripe perfume of vampires.

"You don't need boots," Edward says.

"You just don't wanna stop," Jasper tells him.

"Not for boots you don't need."

"I need the restroom, one way or the other," Leah breaks in.

"Pea-bladder," Seth says. She throws a wadded-up napkin at him without looking; it's almost whipped out the window by the wind. "I'm hungry," he adds.

Knowing his wish to keep going will be overruled, Edward sighs. It is a long-suffering sound. "It's about the journey, little brother," Jasper tells him, smiling slightly. "Not the destination."

"Please don't quote Jack Kerouac to me."

"That wasn't Jack Kerouac. It's Chinese philosophy."

"It sounds like Kerouac."

"Not if you'd actually read anything he's written. On the Road is iconic, Edward."

"The Beats were high or dunk most of the time - including Kerouac; that's not art."

"My mom like the Beatles," Seth blurts out. "She says they're classic."

The rest of them laugh. "Beat poetry, not the Beatles," Edward explains, patiently. "Although the Beatles credited Kerouac for inspiration. So did Bob Dylan."

"'The only people for me are the mad ones,'" Jasper quotes, "'the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh . . . '"

His voice is sad, however. Could vampires be called 'mad to live,' or just plain mad from living too long?

"You gonna add that to my reading list, Old Man?" Leah asks him, glancing over.

"Consider it added," Jasper tells her. "Along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh, too."

"Please tell me they're easier than Machiavelli. Or Homer."

"They are."

"Hallelujah." She turns back to stare out the window, her eyes scrunched up against the blaze of a setting sun. She wears no sunglasses. Jasper sees another sign for the St. Joe Boot Company, and wonders if there will be shadow enough around the store for him to sneak in, or if he should take a rain check.

"So," he says after a minute, "we talked about my reading list for you, but we never talked about the books you had me read."

Leah doesn't answer immediately, just continues to stare out the window. Seth listens with his chin resting on the back of the front seat while Edward ignores them, staring out his own window at the rolling prairie. He's smiling, expression a bit dopey, and from the emotions radiating off him, Jasper doesn't have to ask what he's thinking about. He's on this trip under duress.

Finally, Leah asks only, "What did you think of them?"

He considers it. A mile or two passes. "They were angry books - not unfairly. I learned things I hadn't known, and it made me angry. The non-fiction was easier in some ways than the fiction, though."

Her curiosity sparks in oranges and pinks and she turns to look at him. "Why? I'd think the fiction would be easier."

"Stories bring it home better," Jasper explains. "They reach the gut, not just the head - touch the capacity of the heart. They make it real because you feel it." This is something he understands all too well, the power of emotion. It's why he struggles for a stoical equilibrium. Ataraxia. "But the stories didn't always go in order. That took me a mite to get used to."

"They went in order," Leah corrects. "They just didn't go chronologically. Sometimes that's not the best way to tell the story."


	2. Reading Lists

**2. Reading Lists**

"After everything that's happened, I can't understand why you still hate us so. We're not the enemy."

Her interrogator's expression is somewhere between irritated and confused, and he stands there at the end of her booth, hands on hips like a girl, except at 6'3" and muscled, he's patently no girl. Leah swallows a laugh. "You're white," she tells him.

His lips thin and he speaks too softly for anybody near them -- if anybody had been near them -- to hear. But her ears are almost as good as his. "I thought it's the fact we're vampires -- _leeches_ --" his emphasis is unkind, "that you object to?"

"There's a difference?" She means it as a joke. From his expression, it's obvious he doesn't get it. "You suck the life out of Mother Earth, steal our sacred lands, make treaties then break them whenever its convenient for you. You're _all_ vampires as far as I'm concerned."

His expression changes subtly, but she's not sure how to describe it. "How very convenient, to see the world in such clear divisions of black and white. Or should that be Red and White?"

Humor. That's what he's concealing. He's laughing at her -- and she's the one who loses her temper instead of him. Leaning over the tabletop, fists clenched, she snarls, "You don't know jack shit!" She hates that her snarl sounds doglike.

She is not a bitch. Whatever the boys call her.

His eyebrow goes up. "Then educate me."

"You don't wanna learn."

"How do you know?"

"The white man never does."

"How do you know?"

She resists snarling again. He sounds like one of the Elders, answering her with questions, unseating her certainty, requiring her to think, and she's reminded that he's older than any living Quileute, or anybody in their cousin tribes, either. Sam told her he fought in the Civil War.

Despite herself, a part of her is curious about that -- what life was like then.

She won't ask him.

Instead, she lifts her chin. "Got some paper?"

She didn't think he would, but to her surprise, he tilts his head in the direction of the door and says, "I'll be right back."

He's gone almost too fast, as if afraid she might disappear in his absence, but she's not going anywhere, not with half a cup left of black coffee that cost her 1.89-plus-tax. She occupies a booth in the Forks Coffee Shop -- which is really a pricy, all-day restaurant -- with its light blue upholstery, pale formica table tops, and a stuffed deer head hanging on a column in the divider between shop halves. She finds it vaguely repulsive, like the chintzy Christmas lights, the scenic waterfall wallpaper in the foyer, and the fake rustic rafters. Tourists must eat it up.

Sometimes she thinks nineteen is too old to be so cynical, but life hasn't inclined her to believe in fairytales, even if -- technically -- she's a walking, breathing example. Except her tale doesn't end in happily-ever-after, and how dare that Leech corner her here to ask his annoying questions. Because he had, of course -- cornered her -- to talk of Hidden Things in a public place.

Now, he's back, carrying a pad and pen, and slides into the booth opposite her without so much as a by-your-leave. Oddly, he looks almost eager. "Okay, I've got that paper, darlin'," he says. She can hear -- somewhere buried in the lengthened, flattened vowels -- the hint of an old Southern accent. She doesn't notice it normally.

"Custer died for your sins," she says.

He looks up. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's the name of a book. _Custer Died for Your Sins. _Vine Deloria -- V-I-N-E, like a grape vine. _God is Red_, too, but it's even angrier." She smirks. "You'd better be ready for it, white man. Oh, and _American Indians, American Justice_ -- if you really wanna know why we're so fucking pissed off."

One blond eyebrow flickers; she can see it, but his face is bent over the paper. He writes in neat, almost block script. "What else?"

"_Killing the White Man's Indian_," she says. "Bordewich. _In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. _ Matthiessen." She pauses and spells that for him as well. He doesn't look up, just dutifully records. "_Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee _-- Dee Brown. _The Sacred Hoop _-- Paula Gunn Allen." She pauses. "That enough for you, white man?"

"My name is Jasper, you know. I don't call you red girl. 'Once you label me, you negate me.' Kierkegaard." He flips over the cover on his tablet, closing it, and looks up at her. "You like to read." His face is serious -- no hint of disdain. But he wouldn't feel disdain, would he? White men with their dead-tree paper books of frozen knowledge that any fool could access . . . they have no sense of living wisdom or earning the right to learn. It pisses her off, even while she feels guilty because she does like books. So she blushes and looks away. Her family teases her for it, her reading, but her father . . . she chokes and shuts off that thought. She misses him terribly, and not just because he defended her love for books. 'Nothing wrong with reading,' he'd say. 'Get you into college. Get you off the rez.' Despite being an Elder, like many, he'd had a love-hate relationship with the reservation. 'You keep up those good grades and they'll get you out of here.'

Except her good grades hadn't gotten her anywhere, had they? She and Sam . . . once, they'd been the pride of the Quileute Tribal School. Over-achievers, the both of them, well-matched -- they could have escaped, and not in the usual way . . . into the army, to jail, or in a pine box. No, they could have gone to college, kept each other company, kept each other from running home in desperation at the alienness of a white world. "_Learn,_" her father had told her for as long as she could remember. "A good education is your ticket to a better life. You Walk Between Worlds, Leah. Creatures of two worlds -- they have special power. You learn, and you bring it back here. You make the People stronger with your World Walking." So what if college hadn't been the usual expectation for an Indian girl? She'd had high hopes for a scholarship anyway.

Until the Cullens had come. Until an old legend -- an old curse -- had manifested. Until damn "destiny" (she didn't even _believe_ in destiny) had torn Sam from her side, and a bad heart had stolen her father. What did a 4.0 matter now? So she'd given up on white school. Her last year had been -- according to her teachers -- an unmitigated disaster.

But she still likes to read.

And fucking Jasper Hale -- yes, she knows his name -- doesn't need to hear any of that. He's not her family, he's not a member of her tribe. He doesn't _belong_.

"I read sometimes," she says now.

His grin is . . . quirky. He slips the pad and pen into his breast pocket where her father had once kept his cigarettes. It's a familiar male gesture and makes her throat swell with grief.

Abruptly -- and to her great shock -- his cold hand is covering her warm one. "I'm sorry for your loss," he says.

It's absolutely sincere, and she tries to ignore her anger along with the icy-hard feel of him and the rot-sweet _stink_ of vampire. "It was over a year ago," she says.

"Grief is a cycle. It doesn't end overnight. He was your father."

She remembers what Jacob told her -- this one doesn't read minds, he reads _emotions_. She thinks that is, perhaps, the more invasive and rips her hand free, rubbing warmth back into it. Some completely irreverent and stupid part of her thinks**:** "Cold hands, warm heart." Except he doesn't have one. A heart. His is _dead_.

"It's none of your damn business," she tells him now.

"To grieve makes us human," he replies. It's trite, and annoys her. Her coffee isn't finished, but it's stone cold. She stands up.

"You have your reading list." And she walks away. She doesn't really expect him to finish it, doubts he'll make it through the first book before he's too angry to finish.

He's back three days later. She's in the same booth, in the same coffee shop. She'd like to say she's not predictable but her own predictability belies her. "I thought I got rid of you?" she says by way of greeting.

He just grins. He knows her words hold more astonishment than heat. Damn empath. (Yes, she knows what that word means. She's got a good vocabulary, thank you.) Sitting down, he takes out the same pad and flips it open, pen clicked at ready. He looks up at her. "More?"

So she gives him more. Autobiography this time, and fiction. _An Indian Boyhood_ by Charles Eastman, along with his _From the Deep Woods to Civilization_, also _Bead on an Anthill _by Delphine Red Shirt, and _Lakota Woman _by Mary Crow Dog. _A House Made of Dawn_ by N. Scott Momaday, _The Beet Queen_ by Louise Erdrich, _Solar Storms_ by Linda Hogan, _Grass Dancer_ by Susan Power, and Gerard Vizenor's _Bearheart_. If he can make it through _Bearheart_, she'll be impressed -- it's a prime example of Red black humor.

"Oh," she adds in conclusion, "anything by Sherman Alexie. He's ours. Well, sort of. He's not Quileute, but he's Pacific Northwest -- Spokane. Why not start with _Indian Killer_?" It's a sly suggestion, perhaps a little cruel. _Indian Killer _isn't an easy novel for white readers. She also doesn't tell the Leech that Alexie isn't the most popular guy among his own. She's heard the local gossip. But she's not well-liked by her tribe, either -- seen as just as eccentric and divisive, a little too self-aware -- so she's sympathetic. _A prophet is never welcome in his own country . . .  
_

She ignores the fact that comes from the White Man's Bible. She's sometimes selective in what she takes and what she jettisons; she's Traditional -- not narrow. In any case, the Leech takes her suggestions, gives her a smile . . . buys her another coffee . . . and departs.


	3. Centering the Periphery

**3. Centering the Periphery**

"I'm attempting to center the periphery."

"You're what?" Esme turns from her work among the roses, pruning shears in hand, her straw hat pulled low over her eyes, although she doesn't need the hat. It's just another of her attempts at human normalcy. She came out to the garden to work while Jasper lay on a bench, reading. Seeing him there, she casually asked what he was doing.

Now, sitting up, he smiles. "I'm trying to understand the Other."

She tilts her head and her smile is both amused and bemused. "The other?"

"The Quileute -- well, Indians generally."

She laughs and returns to her pruning. "You could have just said you were reading about Indians, Jasper."

"That would only have told you what I was reading, not what I was doing. You asked what I was doing."

Her laugh grows. "I'd say it's 'semantics' but I'm sure I'd get a lecture on their importance."

"They are important."

She doesn't respond to that, works on the bush, looking for diseased leaves and removing them. He watches; he doesn't return to reading. "So why is reading about Indians centering a periphery?" she asks finally. He thinks she asks mostly because she knows he will enjoy explaining rather than because she really wants to know. Esme is not a thinker in the usual sense. Her intelligence is kinetic and empathic. For all he is the family empath, it is Esme who leads with her heart. He doesn't think of her has his mother, even if Alice does. He is too old. But he does admire her. She has a way of verbally cutting the Gordion Knot.

"The periphery," he says now, "involves the boundary regions. The ancient Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans all viewed the world as a nexus of central power around which lived rings of increasingly alien Others. Scythians, Indians -- from India, I mean -- Nubians, Germans, even the mythic Hyperboreans. You can see it in the maps they drew. They are at the center, and the further a group lived from that center, the more inferior they were perceived as being." He pauses to see if Esme has followed him thus far. She nods. He goes on.

"We've inherited that view here in the West. When Europeans encountered the Other in their explorations, they attempted to categorize and cubbyhole -- but always with _their_ categories. Let me ask this -- if you were to go to a strange town and wanted to know the history of the place, what would you do?"

She smiles. "Well, I'd find somebody who lived there and ask."

"Exactly. That's the common-sense response. But it assumes one thing -- that you respect the people you're talking to enough to listen to their answer. Europeans traveling to Africa, or India, or the Americas . . . they didn't respect the people they met. So they _told_, they didn't ask. They regarded the people they encountered as the Uncivilized Other living on the periphery."

Twisting in her crouch, she looks back at him. "None of us regard the Quileute as uncivilized, Jasper. We've outgrown the era of Colonization. Look at that movie, _Dances With Wolves_. It was the _white people _in that movie who were the 'bad guys.'"

He nods. "_Dances With Wolves _was a start. But who was the star of it?"

"What?"

"Who was the movie's star?"

"I don't remember the character's name."

"It doesn't matter. Kevin Costner was the star. Kevin Costner who's white. In a movie supposedly about Indians, the main character is a white man."

She is looking at him, her mouth a straight line. He's irritated her, which is a hard thing to do. But sometimes, like Sokrates, he enjoys playing the gadfly. "Well," she says, "most viewers who went to see it weren't Indians. They needed somebody to identify with."

Just a week ago, he would have said the same thing. "Absolutely true. But _the white man_ tells the story, and the periphery remains the periphery. Maybe they've become a positive periphery instead of a Wild Bunch of Indians -- but they're still the periphery, you see? Still Other. It's a story about a white man getting to know Indians. It's not a story about Indians getting to know a white man." He holds up the book he's been reading. It happens to be Charles Eastman's _An Indian Boyhood. _ "Centering the periphery means hearing the story from the Indian side. That's what I'm trying to do. This is a story about an Indian getting to know white men."

"What you're telling me," Esme says now, "is that centering the periphery means learning to listen to other people talk about their experiences?"

"Yes."

She returns to her roses. "You don't need fancy words for that, Jasper." She looks back at him again and her smile is impish. "Haven't you heard the old Indian saying, 'If you want to understand me, walk a mile in my moccasins'?"

For just a moment, he stares at her. Then he bursts out laughing.


	4. When Priam Visited Achilles

**4. When Priam Visited Achilles**

It takes the Leech a week this time -- but he's back. "You're predictable," she greets him.

"I'm curious," he corrects.

"Why?" she asks. She's more curious herself than she wants to let on, and he knows it, damn him. At least his smile is gentle, not vicious.

"I want to understand," he says. "How can I, unless I listen to what you have to say?"

For a moment, the very earth shifts. For a moment, she feels overwhelmed -- can't speak. Finally, she says, "Did you know -- after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Sioux pierced Custer's eardrums. Whites thought they were defiling the body. They weren't. They did it so he could learn to _listen _in his next life."

"I'm listening," he says. "Even if it's difficult."

She stares at the surface of her coffee. There are little waves in it. She doesn't know why until she realizes her fingers on the handle are shaking. "Why do you care?"

"Because you helped us."

She'd thought he might say because what had been done to her people had been wrong, or he'd give some other philosophical, romanticized reason. But no. His reasons are personal. She trusts that.

So she talks. He listens. They spend almost 90 minutes there. This time, _she_ leaves with a reading list. Homer's _Iliad_ -- "I always thought a non-Christian, non-Western audience would understand it better" -- Machiavelli's _The Prince_, and Kierkegaard's _Fear and Trembling_.

It takes her more than a week to get through them; it's not easy going. They meet again. This time she asks, "Aren't you married? Isn't your wife worried?"

He laughs and buys her a sandwich and another coffee. "You could be my great-great-great -- maybe even my great-great-great-_great_ -- granddaughter. So no. She's not."

She lets it slide. Whether she wants to or not, she's come to think of him as an Elder even if his face is that of a college boy. His mind, however . . . and even more to the point, his experience, his ability to listen and care . . . these are not a boy's. She doesn't think of him as her age.

"So how were the books?" he asks now as she begins to eat.

"Homer's bloody," she says around her bite. "Machiavelli's ruthless. Kierkegaard . . . well, he's hard."

"You can handle it." It's not encouragement; it's a statement.

"I needed a fucking dictionary."

"And I'm sure you have one."

She does, in fact. His certainty annoys her.

"You're plenty clever," he adds, and she suddenly realizes that his accent has become more pronounced the more time she's spent with him. He isn't hiding so much of himself. She doesn't think he's the type to lie, but he also doesn't always reveal everything. "What did you think of Kierkegaard's central thesis?"

"That sounds like an essay question."

"If it were an essay question, I'd have asked what his central thesis _was_. I asked what you thought of it."

She sips coffee, then says, "I think he thinks nothing's either-or, which seems sorta self-evident to me. Of course nothing's either-or. If life was that easy to figure out, we'd all have the same answer."

He grins. It's fierce. "Exactly. There is no black and white. Or red and white. Nietzche -- he's another philosopher -- "

"I know who Nietzche is."

"Nietzche said, 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' Even with science -- we went from a Copernican universe to Galileo to Newton to Einstein and now to Hawking. What is 'true' changes as our own perspectives change. Anyway, Kierkegaard rejected rationalism. He said, 'The fact that truth is objectively a paradox shows in its turn that subjectivity is the truth.' That's one of his greatest contributions to later existential thought -- that truth is subjective."

Leah has been eating while he talks and resists smiling at his enthusiasm. He is usually calm, but now she can feel his passion for the topic infect her despite the twenty-five-cent words. She says, "Can you put all that in plain English?"

"It means we each determine what's true based on our own personal experience. What else have we got to judge by? So what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you."

"Well, of course not. Why would it be?"

One sandy brow goes up. "Some would disagree. Thomas Merton, for instance, jumping off Thomas Aquinas who wrote much earlier, and who was bouncing off of Aristotle in turn, believed in an epistemology of ontological truth proceeding from the First Cause, which he considered to be infinite in nature. In other words, God. But he had problems discovering that truth -- "

"Whoa! Time-out!" Leah says, setting down her sandwich to make a T-shape with her hands. "English, Jasper. Put it in _English_!"

"Ah -- _you_ just used my name." She wrinkles her nose, but doesn't reply. "In 'English,'" he continues, "it means that some people think there's an ultimate truth to be found, and for some of those, it's revealed religious truth. Certain ideas and values are just 'true,' and any notion of relative truth -- or situational ethics, either -- is not only wrong, but dangerous . . . a slippery slope, I've heard it called. Stealing is stealing, murder is murder, obscenity is obscenity, etc. There's no wiggle room. I once saw a bumper sticker that read, 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it.'"

"That's stupid," she snaps. It is perhaps more emphatic than she'd intended but she doesn't like being told what to think. "I mean, what if the Creator says something different to me? How does that person know he's right and I'm wrong? Maybe I'm right and he's wrong."

Jasper nods. "Many a war or a persecution has begun over just such quarrels. The difficulty is that human beings are herd animals, and in order to live together peacefully in community, certain common 'truths' must be agreed upon. That's how civil law comes to be in the first place -- it reduces conflict between neighbors. Over time, and for a whole host of reasons, some of those civil laws can grow into absolute law, or apodictic law, which requires an authority beyond the community to dictate it in order to justify the claim to absolutism. The Ten Commandments are apodictic law, for instance."

She doesn't reply to that immediately, and isn't really thinking about what he said anyway, although it's a rather startling idea. Had he really just implied that human beings create the Creator in their own image? Then again, what would God mean to a vampire? "You're having fun, aren't you?"

"Having fun?"

"You think all of this is fun."

"It is fun. Trying to understand people -- why they think and act the way they do -- is fun."

She takes another bite and chews. He watches and waits. "Why did you give me Machiavelli to read, if you think so much of Kierkegaard?" she asks finally. "I don't think Kiekegaard would approve of Machiavelli."

"I doubt he did. Why do you think that is?"

She puzzles over it, having expected him to tell her, not ask her. "Uh, because Machiavelli is interested in results, not in how you get there, whether it's ethical or not?"

He nods. "Mahatma Ghandi said, 'There can be no good end if there are no good means.' Now there's nothing wrong with pragmatism. Everyone should read Machiavelli. But the ends don't justify the means." Suddenly, his expression is bitter. "They never justify the means."

And that fast, it's not about books or his 'programs of truth' anymore. "You say that like you know it personally. What have you seen?"

He glances around. As usual, nobody sits near them, whether in instinctive avoidance of him or instinctive avoidance of _her_. "Let's walk," he says.

She takes a final two bites of her sandwich and they leave together to pace down the pavement of Fork's main drag. In quiet tones audible only to her sensitive hearing, he tells her his story. She never imagined that being a vampire was so complicated. She'd pity him except, well, she's not _supposed _to. But what did "suppose" ever have to do with reality? His tale is one of war and death and horror, and she understands why he's a quiet man, and why he reminds her of her father sometimes. Her father had fought in Vietnam, one of those Indians recruited for the jungles and sent home with scars on his soul. "War's ugly," he'd said, and anybody who thought otherwise hadn't lived through one, or lived with somebody who'd lived through one. Long, long after returning from the jungles, he'd wake in the night to walk the beach, letting the surf drown out the memories of mortar shells exploding and men's dying screams. Someone -- maybe Jake, maybe Bella -- had told her that vampires had nearly eidetic memories. How much worse must Jasper's flashbacks be? But he'd left it all, in the end. He'd walked away.

"A man," she says when he's finished, "is what his dreams and the Creator make him."

"I think so too," he agrees.

"You believe in the Creator? I thought you didn't even have a soul."

He ignores the insult, recognizing it as half-hearted, said more out of habit than conviction. "I believe in something." He appears thoughtful; she's intrigued. "I can't believe anymore in the myths I grew up with, however**:** _Genesis_, Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, Jonah and the whale . . . We never questioned then, of course. You didn't. The preacher preached and you listened -- like that bumper sticker I quoted to you. The Bible was the Bible, the Word of God, absolutely true. But since . . . well, as you've no doubt gathered, I no longer believe in absolute truth."

He is silent. She lets him think. Their feet crunch on random gravel littering the sidewalk. The day is overcast as usual. They have no shadows. Finally, he says, "Kierkegaard was thirty years older than I am. He was born in 1813, I was born in 1843, but he was already questioning what he'd been taught when he was 28. I was starting my career leading vampire armies at that age." He snorts. "A good soldier doesn't question his orders. I was a good soldier."

"When did you start to question your accepted truth?" she asks him.

His smile is rueful. "When I was more than three times that age. If you live forever, a day's but a moment, and a year's but a day." He glances at her. "I was with Maria, my creator, for four-score years before I came to question her way of life. You know that I have some influence over the emotions of others -- but they also influence me. A child learns what he lives, and so does a newborn vampire. All I knew of my undead life was hate and vengeance and reward. And before I was a vampire, I was a rising officer in an ugly, bloody combat."

He looks off down the street. "I was handsome and clever and tall. I charmed everybody I met, even the slaves on our cattle ranch."

"You had _slaves_ on a cattle ranch? I thought only plantations had slaves?"

"It was the South. My grandfather owned a plantation in Alabama. In 1825, Mexico started offering land grants to settlers. My father, who was the younger son, struck out for Texas in 1834 at 18, along with 100 head of cattle and 15 slaves. He settled near Houston. That was two years before Texas independence. Seven years later, he had 300 acres, 342 head of cattle, and he'd met a girl. They married in '41; I came along two years later. Texas wouldn't even be a state for another 3 years. Technically, I'm not a U.S. citizen. I was born in the Republic of Texas."

"And a _cowboy_? You were a cowboy?"

"Well, I was a rancher's son, but yeah, I reckon you could say I was a cowboy."

She throws her head back and laughs. "We're the cowboys and Indians!"

It makes him smile. "_A_ cowboy and an Indian, anyway." He pauses, then continues with his explanation. "Everybody loved me from the day I was born. Now, of course, I understand why, but then, I simply believed I was special, and life with Maria after my change did little to alter that view. For eighty years, I was her darling -- pampered, indulged." He shakes his head.

"Your parents must have been devastated when they thought you'd died."

"I reckon so."

"You don't know?"

"The rules of vampire life are strict. When you're changed, you die to who you were before. I haven't been Jasper Whitlock since a winter's night in early 1863. Maria encouraged me to forget, so I did."

"But you just told me how and when your father moved to Texas -- all of that."

His smile is bitter. "Because I looked it up. I can't even recall my own mother's face now. What I know about my family, I know from county records. I remember a few things, but not much, and most of that I know because Maria told me."

She wraps her arms around her body. The matter-of-factness of his tone devastates her. To be so rootless -- without a family, without a people . . . that, for an Indian, would be hell. "I can't imagine not having a family.'"

"But I do have a family. Alice is my family, and the Cullens. They took me in and I belong with them now. It just takes my kind a while to adjust. We're like cats." His grin is quick and fierce. "We don't like our routine messed with."

"No wonder you don't get along with my kind. Cats and dogs. Vampires and werewolves."

They don't speak again for a full block, and they're nearing the outskirts of town. Jasper is comfortable with silence, unlike some white men. Finally, she stops and looks at him. Since her growth spurt, he is not so much taller than she is. "So you explained why Machiavelli and why Kierkegaard, but you didn't explain the _Iliad_."

"I thought that one might be obvious."

"Gee, thanks. I'm too dumb to get the obvious."

His smile is faint. "You're anything but 'dumb,' Leah Clearwater. But think about it. How does the _Iliad_ end?"

"The old dude had to go to Achilles' tent to get his son's body back because Achilles was acting like a spoiled brat."

"Achilles had his honor insulted, then lost his dearest friend and foster brother. What would you do to a vampire who killed Seth?"

"Rip him apart."

"Just so. Hector killed Patroclus, and Achilles knew only grief and vengeance. Until the end. Do you remember what changes his mind at the end?"

She starts to shake her head, but more because she has to think about it. "The old dude -- what's his name -- "

"Priam."

"Yeah, him -- he tells Achilles to think about his own dad."

"Exactly. Vengeance and loss makes us inhuman. Love . . . love and compassion grant us our humanity back." His gold eyes are distant. "Once, I was Achilles."

"What? You think I'm Priam to come groveling?"

"No," he says, and smiles. "After all, which of us sought out the other?"

She blinks. "But you just said you were Achilles."

"_Once_, I was. Once, Priam was a young man, too."

"Oh, so now _I'm_ Achilles." She isn't sure she likes that comparison any better. "Seth's still alive, you know -- unless you plan to kill him."

His smile just widens. "Metaphors aren't exact, Leah. But you've experienced loss, haven't you? And because of my kind? We _are_ the cowboys and the Indians. The Trojans and the Achaeans. Cats and dogs. But all that's _myth_, isn't it? In the end, Achilles was a son and Priam was a father, and that's what really mattered. We aren't our labels. Like I said before -- labels negate."

He holds out a hand to her. "Hello, ma'am. My name is Jasper."

She stares at the hand, then raises her own to grasp it. She doesn't notice -- as much -- that it's hard and cold. "Hello, Jasper. My name is Leah."


	5. A Broken Down Mustang

**5. A Broken-Down Mustang**

Jasper has never really cared about cars. Oh, he can drive, and appreciates a pretty piece of machinery, but of all the Cullens, he and Esme are the ones least interested in vehicles.

He is, however, still a fair judge of horseflesh and might have opted for owning a few horses -- the Cullens could certainly afford them -- but doubts any would let him get within twenty feet of them without shying and bolting. There is another reason for not owning horses, however. If Emmett likes grizzlies, and Esme likes elk, and Edward likes cougars, as hard as they can be to come by these days . . . Jasper has a taste for wild mustang. He fears that if he bought a horse, he might lose control and _eat_ his ride.

In any case, he comes by this particular mustang by accident. One afternoon in mid-July, he gets a call from Leah. It is still a month before The Wedding. (He thinks of it in capital letters because it looms large in Alice's thoughts, and thus by default, in his life.) "I found a Mustang," she tells him. "You said you like them. Well this one's been sitting in Clayton Olson's back lot for about . . . twenty years now? It's mostly rusted out -- more a dog house than a vehicle. He said I can have it if I'll haul it away. Well, you can have it. I don't want it."

He blinks, then realizes the confusion and smiles to himself although she can't see. "When I said I liked mustangs, Leah, I meant the horse. For dinner."

There is a momentary silence, then she says, voice soft, "Oh."

"I appreciate the thought, however." He pauses, mind working, turning over possibilities. If he accepts the car, it will give Rosalie something to do besides drift around the house and complain. If she no longer resents Bella or begrudges Edward, of them all, Rose likes her routines disturbed the least and preparations for the wedding have been hard on her. "But if this Leonard wants to be rid of the car," Jasper says, "I'll take it. Assuming I can get to it. If it's on the reservation -- "

"We'll bring it to the line. Me, Seth and Quil. Meet us near the state road, ennit? Tomorrow afternoon, say . . . four p-m?"

"We'll be there."

He presses Edward and Rose into service, and Emmett tags along for fun. Alice doesn't. She has too much to do and dashes around these days like a chicken with her head cut off. She loves it. She was born to organize. People think all she cares about is fashion and parties, but that isn't it at all. Alice has a mind like a steel trap and a natural gift for seeing patterns. Perhaps that's what her prescience really is -- she sees patterns, whether it's for planning an event or the future. In any case, he's learned to stay out of her way.

So he, Edward, Rosalie and Emmett are waiting at the treaty line when they hear Leah and the boys coming down the road -- it is the grind of a large engine and the sound of something . . . dragging. There is shouting too, some in encouragement, some in curses. Then in the distance, he spots their approach and laughs. Leah drives what looks like a Bobcat _backloader_ -- in reverse -- towing a wheelless, windowless, headlightless silver shell that might once have been a car. Jasper isn't entirely sure. It sits atop several sheets of plywood and is roped to the backhoe's articulated arm. Jasper has to admit, it's a rather clever improvisation, but he wonders why they couldn't just have used a tow-truck.

Beside him, Rosalie gasps. "Oh, my _GOD_, that is a classic '67 fastback! What are they _doing_ to that poor CAR!" Her distress for the vehicle might have driven her to break the treaty getting to it if Emmett hadn't held her back by the waist. Jasper smirks. Rosalie will be in hog heaven for at least a week, fixing it -- and out of Alice's hair.

The Quileute reach the line and tow the car over it. Leah opens the backhoe door to shout over the roar of the engine. "Think you can take it from here?"

"I think we can manage," Jasper calls back.

"What'd you need a backhoe for?" Emmett wants to know, walking halfway around the Mustang while Seth bounds over (still more boy than youth) to bump fists with Edward, then help Quil untie the car from its makeshift sled and move it off as Rosalie directs.

"Careful of the grill! _Careful!_" she yells.

"We, uh, sorta had to dig it out," Leah explains now, gesturing to the loader. "It was buried at least a foot in the dirt."

Jasper pulls out his wallet. "What do I owe Clayton for it?"

"Nothing. He just wanted rid of it."

"What do I owe you and the boys for it?"

"A ride to a pow-wow. When it's fixed. You got yourself an NDN Kar there, Old Man." Leah slams the backhoe door shut and puts it back in gear, puttering up the road onto reservation land. Quil races after but Seth pauses a moment to grin at Edward, then he, too, follows.

Jasper just shakes his head and turns to Rosalie. "What'll it take to fix it?"

She taps one red-lacquered fingernail on full red lips. "Everything. Pretty much everything. All you've got here is the body."

"How long will you need?"

"A week."

It takes her a week and a half -- held up for parts. It's almost August when she calls him out to her garage. What he sees there he doesn't even recognize as the car Leah had delivered. "Acapulco Blue," she tells him and hands him the keys. He has never understood the need to give fancy names to car paint. The car is blue, or perhaps bright blue, if one is being particular. It's the rest of its transformation that truly startles. "You are now the proud owner of the only American-made car in this family," Rose adds.

That evening, he checks the newspaper for the nearest pow-wow -- realizes he isn't even sure where to start looking, despite all he's read. He's learned the history, but lacks the pragmatic of day-to-day native life. He opens his cell and dials Leah's number. "How do I find a pow-wow?" He doesn't even say hello. She'll know who it is.

"Car's fixed already?"

"Rosalie works fast. It helps that we don't have to sleep."

"I guess so!"

"So -- about that pow-wow?"

"You trust me?"

"Yes." It is, he thinks, a profound statement. Because it's true.

"Seth and I'll be by your house tomorrow afternoon. Be ready to go."

"I thought pow-wows were on the weekends?" Tomorrow is Wednesday.

"They are. I asked if you trusted me."

"Yes." He says it with more caution this time. "What about Quil?"

"Oh, he has to work. So do I, but I've got some vacation coming. See ya tomorrow, Old Man."

And they are there, as promised, by early afternoon. Knowing he'd be in the company of humans (even wolves he doesn't want to eat) Jasper hunted at dawn, but it is several hours before they arrive. He hears her car rumbling down the long drive. They park it off to the side and pile out, and it should be awkward, this -- two werewolves visiting a house full of vampires. But it's not. Of the family, only Rosalie remains slightly hostile, but Jasper thinks that may owe as much to their method of towing the Mustang as it owes to the fact they're werewolves. Emmett is curious, but keeps his distance; Esme is welcoming. Carlisle is at work. Edward is there, and has come out of the house, probably to greet Seth. Alice comes out, too, followed by a disgruntled Bella and Leah's gaze on her is . . . cool. Jasper can feel the dislike radiating from them both, and thinks only some of it has to do with Jacob. Perhaps he can get it out of Leah eventually.

Alice approaches him and grips his arm, looks up into his face. "You're taking Edward," she says, and he's not sure if she's giving him an order or telling him what she's Seen. He suspects she likes it that way, less for the "mystery" than to keep people from arguing with her.

"I am? I didn't think you could See anything involving the wolves. And trouble is, I don't know where I'm going myself, hon."

Her smile turns impish. "A pow-wow."

"Yeah, I got that much."

"Look -- I need Bella's full attention this weekend, but when Edward's around, she runs to him to escape and he backs her up. If he ever wants me to get this wedding ready, I need to have her to myself for a few days in a row. I just know you and he won't be here this weekend."

"Ah."

Her smile is bright as she lets him go, pats his arm and stands on tiptoe to kiss him. He has to bend down to reach her. The kiss is brief. It always is, in company. "See you Tuesday night," she says.

"Come on," Jasper tells Edward, gesturing him towards the garage where the Mustang waits.

He appears confused, but follows. "Huh?"

"We're going for a little ride, it looks like."

"Me?"

He clearly hasn't been reading minds -- he doesn't always -- but now he does and his mouth turns into a stubborn line, arms crossed. Their rectitude is something he and Bella share. "I'm not going to argue with you," Jasper tells him, entering the garage and crossing to the Mustang, opening the driver's side. "Get in the damn car, Eddie. Alice said you're coming."

"But Bella -- "

" -- _can_ survive without you for a few days. And you can survive without her for the same."

"I told her after I got back that I'd never leave her again."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Jasper starts the engine, then reaches across to unlatch the passenger side. "Stop being a melodramatic ass."

Edward glares through the open passenger side, then sighs and crawls in, readjusting the seat because the last person to ride there had been Alice. "You have got to be kidding me. We're going on a trip to -- you don't even know where?" -- he turns to stare at Jasper in surprise -- "locked in a car with two stinky dogs -- "

"Leah and Seth. Their names are Leah and Seth, Edward. And you like Seth."

"I do. In small doses. He's a fourteen-year-old boy," Edward says, as if that explains it -- which it does. "How long is this going to take?"

"I don't know," Jasper lies and starts the engine. It doesn't stop Edward from plucking the truth out of his mind.

"Till _Tuesday night_?" Edward exclaims, twisting in his seat to stare. "Alice said _Tuesday night_? That's almost a week! And the wedding is -- "

"The wedding is why she's getting rid of you," Jasper interrupts, backing the car out of its place as one of the doors raises automatically. Outside, he stops on the drive whhile Leah and Seth drag luggage forward. Jasper must stop the engine in order to pop the trunk because it requires the key. Rosalie restored the vehicle exactly, and old cars lack modern advantages, even if he thinks an old car fits an old vampire better.

Leah and Seth fling in their luggage -- a pair of duffle bags, a big box that rattles suspiciously, and a backpack. The backpack is heavy and Jasper thinks it might contain books. He smiles.

Edward is out of the car too, talking to Bella off to the side. Their faces are somber, reluctant, anxious, and Jasper isn't sure whether he's more amused or more perturbed. "They'll get over it," Alice tells him, sidling up to slip small, thin fingers into his. He squeezes once and lets her go as Seth and Leah cram themselves into the black vinyl backseat.

"Come on, Edward!" he calls and walks back to the driver's side, sliding in and waiting. He doesn't need luggage, but he's glad his wallet was in his pocket so he doesn't have to go back inside to fetch it. Apparently Edward does; he dashes into the house at vampire speed and returns -- but back to Bella, who he kisses lingeringly. In the backseat, Seth makes a gagging noise, cut off with a whoosh when Leah elbows him. Jasper suppresses a laugh as Edward gets in, his mouth turned down. Jasper reverses the car and turns it, then heads off down the driveway towards the state road. He's not sure where they're going, but they'll be back in six days. God created the world in six days. To a vampire, six days are a blink.


	6. Twilight Twister

**6. Twilight Twister**

They say a tornado sounds like a freight train. Leah thinks a freight train sounds like a freight train and a twister sounds like something else entirely.

They are traveling east across Nebraska as dusk approaches, zipping along I-80 through the hypnotic rise-and-fall of the Sand Hills when they first notice the storm. It lies on the southern horizon, a black squall line punctuated by spectacular arcs of lightning, but on the plains, it's hard to tell the distance of anything. It gains on them quickly. Edward is driving, and may be pushing 100 with a V-8 engine, but the storm continues to race northeast towards them all the same.

Seth woke her; she'd been napping with her head in his lap. "Look at that," he tells her as she sits up, his voice somewhere between anxious and excited. "I've never seen a storm like that." The first clouds have already rolled in over them like fuzzy insulation in gray instead of pink.

She can hear the brothers in the front seat conferring in whispers even her ears can't catch, but she can tell they're a little worried. There is nowhere to stop out here, just miles and miles of open land. She leans forward. She's grown so acclimated to them, and with the windows half open, she barely notices their smell. "Do we need to pull off?" She isn't used to storms like this one, and it's scaring her.

"I don't know," Edward says; he's gripping the old steering wheel hard. "That looks like a supercell."

She doesn't speak meteorologist-ese. "What does that mean?"

"It means it's a Big Damn Storm."

"Don't worry," Jasper tells her, turning in the passenger seat. "We'll be fine." She feels calmer, but isn't sure if he did that with his gift or if it owes to the trust a child places in a parent -- and when did he gain that sort of stature with her? He's not her father. She had a father, even if she doesn't any longer.

Seth is wriggling in his seat, looking out the right-hand window at the black line. The rain hasn't reached them yet but the winds have picked up so much she can feel them rock the car. The speedometer needle hovers around 116 now and it's clear Edward is anxious to get somewhere, but she can see no exits down the long black road. Tumbleweeds roll and the Ponderosa Pines that make a highway windbreak bend like drunks. There are a few other cars and at least one big 18-wheeler, but it feels almost as if they are alone out here, running before the storm like a clipper. A few pecks of rain kiss the windshield and then both Edward and Jasper are rolling up the windows. It might make the air inside the car close, but in the next minute she's glad of it as the rain comes down. Even her augmented vision can barely see the road and she wonders how Edward is managing. At least -- thank God -- he's slowed down. Even vampire reflexes won't save them if they hydroplane.

"Please pull over," Seth asks, almost whimpering. "Please pull over." He's scared, and she grips his hand.

"There's an overpass less than five miles away," Edward says. "I can see it the minds of drivers sheltering there. We want to get into the lee of that."

They take four minutes to reach it. Nobody speaks. She's sure both she and Seth would be crawling out of their skin but for Jasper. His head is tilted, as if he's listening. Edward glances back at them then returns his eyes to the road, or what of it he can see. Rain is coming down in blue sheets, pounding hard, and there is a hollow pocking of hail on the roof. It's very dark. She feels the car slowing and then pulling off to the side even as the rain lessens. They're under an overpass that runs north and south.

"Get out of the car," Edward says, even as he's opening his door and yanking his seat forward, yanking her out of the back too into the wind and blown rain. Jasper is doing the same with Seth on the other side. Theirs is not the only car under the overpass. At least two others wait there, and a motorbike. But the people remain sensibly in their vehicles, and even if the overpass keeps off the worst of the rain, she's soaked in less than a minute. Edward has picked her up and carried her over to the sandbagged-and-concrete side where Jasper already huddles with Seth. She should be embarrassed to be herded, but she's not. The pack might fearlessly face Edward and Jasper's kind, but she's not stupid enough to stand up to Grandmother Earth's rage.

"Why are we out of the car?" Seth asks -- shouts really. The wind is howling through the underpass, and however good the hearing of all of them, it's LOUD.

"Because cars can turn over," Edward shouts back.

"And this overpass could fall down!" Seth returns. He's so scared he's shaking. Or maybe he's just cold from the wind and rain, except they don't get cold like that.

Edward does something surprising then; he moves forward and puts an arm around Seth's shoulders. "We'll protect you from anything falling."

"We're werewolves!" Seth shouts.

"And we're _rock_," Edward replies. "You're still flesh and blood. You can't phase -- not here."

There are too many humans in the other cars, and even if they're not really watching, they'd probably notice two giant _wolves_ who suddenly appeared. Leah's aware that Jasper has moved up beside her, gripping her much the same as Edward has Seth, and however she might resent the patronizing, she's also glad of it. Here, now, she needs another's touch, however cold and hard. They are in this together, the four of them.

Within five minutes, the first wave of rain has passed over and there's a lull, but then the wind picks up again. Jasper is looking out at the black sky. "Another wall's coming," he says, then calls across to Edward, almost playfully, "Isn't it late in the year for big storms like this?"

"Tell that to the storm!" Edward calls back.

Leah realizes she has no idea if it's late or early, and doesn't care. Instead she darts out of Jasper's loosened grasp, back to the Mustang, throwing open the door to grab the braided sweetgrass she'd put on the dashboard just yesterday. Jasper catches her even as her hand closes on it. "What are you doing?" he yells.

"Getting this!" She lets him guide her back to the wall of overpass even as a roar grows like all the Thunder Beings talking at once. He pushes her down and covers her with his body. She grips the sweetgrass and prays as her father taught her to pray. She never really learned Quileute -- like most modern Indians her 'native' language is English -- but she's heard her father pray and she echoes it now, singing to the Spirits of the sky, and to her ancestors in the earth far away. The howling is deafening and she dares to peek out from under Jasper's arm.

That's when she sees it -- as black as midnight, whipping right and left, enormous and dreadful and awesome. The tornado. She can't tell how far away it is, but as far as she's concerned, it's too damn close. And all she can do is pray. She is a Protector. And even if she and Seth have men of stone shielding them, she is a Protector, and she asks the Spirits to cover them. She reaches for Grandmother Earth and finds a little dirt under her fingers despite the white man's concrete. She digs in.

She sings as hard as she can.

The roaring crescendos, and then, abruptly, the tornado disappears out of her line of vision. The roar is still there, but she can't see it; it's turned. Only the tumbleweeds and dust and a stray bit of litter blows by. She feels like a red Dorothy singing, "There's no place like home," and in that moment, all she wants is the sound of sea striking the shore, regular, rhythmic, not this terrible, howling splendor of the Great Plains.

Seconds inch past, then a minute, two, three, four . . . the wind dies down again and now there is just rain. She feels Jasper release his hold on her and she looks around. They are all four wet, but unharmed. So's the Mustang, and the other cars and the motorbike under the pass. Shivering more from adrenaline than anything, she looks down at the braided strand of sweetgrass still gripped in her fist. Slowly, she opens her hand. It carried her prayers; she carries it's imprint across her palm.

She starts to laugh. It is full of desperation and relief.


	7. Born to be Wild

**7. Born to Be Wild**

It is already mid-afternoon by the time they actually make it to State Road 101, headed north out of Forks and east towards Port Angeles. That wasn't entirely accidental, according to Leah. She knew it would be difficult for them to travel by day. "We can sleep in truck stops when the sun's out," she tells Jasper and Edward. "I'm afraid it's gonna be sunny more often than not where we're going."

"Where _are_ we going?" Jasper asks.

She makes a tut-tut noise. "That'd be telling, Old Man. Oh, and I noticed somebody packed tents in the trunk. And a guitar. So I guess we can camp if we need to."

Jasper shakes his head. "That would be Alice. She might not be able to see everything with you and Seth involved, but she could see enough around the edges."

"Must be handy, having a precog."

"Or just annoying," Edward says, eying her as if he didn't expect her to know the word "precog." Jasper has learned not to underestimate Leah Clearwater. Her mind reflects her family name -- clear and pure, however much she might like to pretend to bitter black cynicism. He knows she's been hurt, but he's seen so many driven to much greater ruin that he finds it hard not to smile at her youthful ennui. He must remind himself that it still _hurts_.

Edward has pulled out his car-tuner and is busy finding a channel for his iPod. This old Mustang has no jack for Twenty-First Century technology, unlike Edward's Volvo. Jasper likes that; it's old and outdated, like him. Edward gets his iPod connected and strains of Chopin fill the vehicle.

"Man, we are not listening to that shit all the way to --" Leah slaps a hand over Seth's mouth.

Edward is glowering over his shoulder into the back seat, but there is something light in it. He's in a good mood these days -- mostly -- and since he and Seth fought together to overcome Victoria, Edward has developed a fondness for the boy. Seth gets an automatic 'get out of jail free' card with Edward. "That is _Chopin_. The Nocturnes," he says. "Not '_shit_.'"

"Who's Chopin?"

Edward buries his face in his hand; Jasper resists laughing.

Something comes sailing past Jasper's shoulder to land on the dashboard. It looks like a circle of . . . weeds? " -- the hell?" Edward mutters, too soft for Seth to hear. For whatever reason, he watches his language around the boy, although Seth doesn't watch his around Edward. "What is that?"

"Sweetgrass," Leah says.

"Never heard of it."

"It's for protection. It carries our prayers so the Spirits ride with us."

Edward resists a scoff. Jasper doesn't think he has any business scoffing. After all, he is the one who believes that vampires lack souls and are bound for eternal damnation. The sweetgrass braid has landed awkwardly and Jasper reaches up to move it to a more secure position. He doesn't mind riding with the spirits.

They also ride with Chopin for a while until Seth's huffing in the backseat gets to be a bit much. "Look," Jasper says finally, "why don't we make a rule -- whoever's driving gets to choose the music?"

"But I'm not old enough to drive!" Seth protests.

"We'll let you choose sometimes."

"Please don't," Leah says, but she's laughing. "We'll be stuck with Chris Brown."

"Who's Chris Brown?" Edward asks, and now it's Seth who puts his face in his hand.

"This is going to be an interesting trip," Leah says.

Jasper pulls out his own iPod and snatches Edward's from between their seats, unplugging it to hook up his own, eyes darting back and forth between the highway and the equipment. When it's attached, he calls up his playlist. It probably won't please any of them, but if he has to listen to Chopin or hip-hop (unlike Edward, he does know who Chris Brown is), then they can listen to Bob Seeger or Lynyrd Skynyrd or CCR. At least he's not inflicting Hank Williams or Hank Snow on them, even if they are "Movin' On."

An electric guitar line grinds out, _chug-chug-chug-chug . . ._

_Get your motor runnin', head out on the highway,  
Lookin' for adventure and whatever comes our way,  
Yeah darlin' go make it happen, take the world in a love embrace,  
Fire all of your guns at once and . . . explode into space . . ._

"Hey!" Seth says from the backseat, sitting up from where he's been sulking. "I know this!"

"I should hope so," Leah said. "Dad played it enough."

Seth starts to beat a rhythm on the back of Edward's seat. "_I like smoke and lightning . . . heavy metal thunder_," he sings in a warbling baritone.

"_Racin' with the wind, and the feelin' that I'm under,_" Jasper picks up the bass line -- which is probably unfortunate. He's a good guitar player but he's not the best singer, vampire voice or not. Having a good voice isn't the same thing as having a good _ear_. Leah comes in with a surprisingly pure soprano and Edward -- perhaps desperate to get them all back somewhere close to the pitch -- tries to take up the lead tenor.

_Like a true nature's child,  
We were born, born to be wild.  
We can climb so high . . . I never wanna diiiie . . .  
Born to be wiiiild . . . born to be wiiiild._

They are riding with the spirits.


	8. A Game of Pool

**8. A Game of Pool**

They're playing Steppenwolf ("Magic Carpet Ride") when Jasper, Leah, Edward and Seth enter the Red Dirt Roadhouse. Feeling silly, Leah raises her hands and snaps her fingers, shimmying to the music. Behind her, Jasper laughs, Edward coughs, and Seth says, "Quit acting like a dope."

She gives up, but mutters, "If you can't remember the last time you danced or the last time you sang, your heart isn't happy and you're not right with the Spirits."

"We've been singing in the car all afternoon," Seth points out.

Beneath the music comes the pop of pool balls, bursts of laughter, and the buzz of people talking. The air is indistinct with smoke. Once, that wouldn't have bothered her and she still remembers the sharp bite of Marlboros on her tongue, but since her Transformation, she can no longer bear the smell of thick cigarette smoke. The vampires seem to have a similar problem and they all find a booth near the door.

Leah and Seth are hungry, and Edward and Jasper have been good at remembering they have to eat. Seth can put away four Big Macs without blinking, then have three more three hours later. "What?" he'd asked when Edward had stared at him the first time he did it. "I'm a growing boy."

"Obviously," Edward had replied.

Now, they are somewhere in southern Oklahoma and if this bar's clientele finds it odd to see two Indians and two white men (one with new boots and a brown Stetson, even if he's taken it off inside), they shoot them no more than a few glances. Leah is glad for the normal human aversion to vampires.

It takes a while for anybody to come to their table, and the waitress who does -- a girl about Leah's age -- has teased bangs standing straight up, lacquered with hairspray in a style that went out with the '80s. Her nametag says, "Crystle," and Leah wonders -- unkindly -- if her mother did that on purpose or if she just can't spell. With the girl's wide cheekbones, flat face, and fleshy nose, Leah thinks she might have some native blood in her, despite the dirty-blond hair and light eyes. Coloring isn't everything. And this _is_ Oklahoma -- Indian Territory.

"WhatkinIgetcha?" Crystle asks, all in one breath. All she needs is a wad of gum and she'd be a walking cliché.

"Two cheeseburgers," Seth says, "with fries and coleslaw. And a large Dr. Pepper."

Crystle gives him a disapproving stare. "Ain't you heard of ladies first?"

Edward is trying not to laugh as Crystle turns to Leah, enunciating more clearly. "What can I getcha?"

"Chicken strips, fries and green beans," Leah says, handing over her menu. "And coffee."

Crystle looks to Edward and Jasper, who just shake their heads. "Water for me," Edward says and Jasper orders coffee too. Leah knows he'll give it to her.

Dinner passes without incident -- just one more human thing in which she and Seth need to indulge that the vampires don't, although they do eat. They hunt every evening, and one nice thing about the less-populated west/midwest is that they can fill their stomachs without attracting undue notice or needing to go too far off the beaten track. (Do vampire even have working stomachs, Leah wonders? Then again, she wouldn't have thought vampires had working dicks, but they must or Bella's not just useless in a fight, she's a raging idiot too.)

They should probably have gone back to the car after, but with being on the road or sleeping in a tent since Wednesday, Seth and Leah are stiff. Jasper and Edward indulge them, and when Seth spots an empty pool table and challenges Edward to a game of 8-Ball, Edward agrees. "Don't beat him too badly," Leah whispers. Edward smiles back; it's crooked.

He does his best to play poorly; Leah can tell. Jasper is suppressing laughter and when Seth and Edward are done (Edward wins but he doesn't crush Seth), Jasper asks her if she'd like to play too, so they reset the table. It's getting late, but for them, the driving day's just began. They'll be in Texas tomorrow.

Jasper's cell phone interrupts as Leah racks the balls and Jasper listens for a moment, one sandy brow up. He says something fast that Leah can't hear and shoots Edward a glance. "Who was that?" Leah asks. She tries to make it casual.

"Alice," Jasper says.

"She checking up on you?"

"She called to say she saw the police show up here after we leave. She can't see the cause, though."

She couldn't see the cause, just like she hadn't been able to see the tornado, because Leah and Seth are along. Leah frowns as Edward walks over, his gaze flicking across faces in the bar. Seth follows. "I'm not sure," Edward says, probably in reply to something Jasper asked silently. Jasper has lined up the cue ball to break the rack, trying to act normal. "But those four in the booth on the far side don't like Indians, don't approve of us being with you, and assume you and Jasper are a couple. They want an excuse to cause trouble. Otherwise, I can't sense anything in anybody's mind that would bring the police."

Leah refrains from looking where Edward has indicated. "Great. Maybe we should leave?"

"But why?" Jasper's grin is wicked. "I ain't gonna run just because of what some small-minded people are thinking." Leah doesn't point out that the Cullens do a lot of running from what people think, at least when it comes to being vampires. "If those boys wanna make something of it . . . well, I ain't been in a brawl in years. Not unless Edward and Emmett count." He pops the cue and breaks the rack neatly. The 13 ends in a corner pocket. "Stripes," he says.

"You could hurt them," Leah admonishes.

"Not unless they make me. Can't walk away from a fight, darlin'."

She rolls her eyes and lines up a shot, muttering, "Men. You're all the same, whatever you are**:** human, wolf, vampire -- it's testosterone-induced stupidity." It's appropriate, she thinks, when Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Three Steps" starts on the Juke Box. Somebody needed to take three steps out of here.

But it won't be her. She likes to play pool, and a small part of her likes to brawl too, even if she won't admit it.

It begins innocently. An Indian boy saunters over, grin wide. He and his friends were sitting at the bar, probably drinking when they shouldn't be. Indians don't hold their liquor well. He has pretty hair. "Aaaay, cousin," he says. "I ain't seen you 'round here."

She spares him a quick glance. "Probably 'cause I'm not from around here." Seth has moved up behind her protectively. She rolls her eyes and takes a shot. It doesn't go in, and Jasper is beating her, damn him, giving no quarter unlike Edward with Seth. But she'd pop him in the nose if he did, and he probably knows it.

Her interrogator leans on the bar and sizes up her ass. "What tribe are you?"

"Quileute," she says.

He blinks. "Never heard of it."

"Northwest Coastal Salish," she says. "Washington State." She doesn't ask his tribe.

He blinks twice. "Wow. You're a long way from home."

She straightens, leaning on her pool que, and sticks out a leg to keep Seth back. She can handle this. Jasper and Edward are -- wisely -- just watching. "Yes," she says, "I am. And I still have a ways to go. So why don't you get some coffee, sober up, and go home, ennit?"

"Aw, why you gotta be so hard, honey?"

She rolls her eyes and turns away from him. "Shove off."

She feels a hand on her arm -- which is jerked away abruptly. For a moment, she assumes it's Seth who intervened, or maybe one of the vampires decided to step in -- but no. It's a cold-eyed, tanned cowboy, a bit short but burly. "We don't want no trouble from your kind in here," he says. "If you're gonna have you a lover's spat, you take it outside, y'hear?"

And suddenly Jasper is _right_ there. He's taller than all of them. His gold eye is cold, but he's smiling. "Excuse me, but I'll take care of my sister." His accent is suddenly as thick as any of theirs.

The cowboy looks startled. "Your sister?"

"That's right."

And there is . . . something. The subtle menace of facing a vampire is too much even for this hardened man. He backs off.

Unfortunately, the young buck is too far into his cups to notice, and says, "That's right! You heard 'im! You leave her alone."

Leah knows it was the wrong move one breath before the cowboy hauls back to belt him.

And that's it. Like an explosion of motion, chairs and stools scrape as men (and a few women) get to their feet. Fists fly. So do a couple of hats.

"Oh, holy _hell_!" Leah mutters as she grabs the Indian boy who'd propositioned her and hauls him free of the worst of it, over to the door and to shove him out. "Go sober up!" she yells.

He stares back at her. "You're one strong woman!" From an Indian, it's a compliment, not an insult.

"And you're drunk!" she tells him, hoping he'll forget about it by morning, chalk up anything unusual to a few too many Miller High Lifes.

By the time she returns, the roadhouse is a mess -- and Jasper, Edward and Seth are square in the middle of it. Laughing, damn them.

"Men are stupid," she says. But she wades in with them. She's got a good right hook. On the Rez, it's a necessary skill to acquire.

They leave before the cops arrive.


	9. Intertribal

**9. Intertribal**

"What _is_ this?" Edward asks as he lifts something large and feather-covered from the box Seth had packed in the trunk. "And are those . . . CDs? Not exactly what I'd expect to see on a traditional dancer."

"But I'm not a traditional dancer," Seth says. "I'm a fancy dancer."

Edward appears puzzled by that. "I thought it was all traditional?" He could probably read the distinction out of Seth's head, but Jasper thinks Edward has been trying to respect the privacy of others more of late -- one of the good changes Bella has wrought in him. Now he looks out over the gym floor below and the cleared area that Leah called the dance arbor. Four large drums sit at the corners, for the four directions, she'd told them. They are big enough for several men to sit around, and look like kettle drums to Jasper's eye except not made of metal. The men in their folding chairs aren't dressed up like the dancers; most wear jeans and t-shirts. Jasper has never been to a pow-wow before so it's all new and strange to him. He, Edward, Leah and Seth sit halfway up the bleachers in the college gymnasium hosting the event, helping Seth don his outfit. There are lots of other people there, but they keep their distance. This is a local affair, and Jasper can't believe they drove all the way from Washington State to attend a pow-wow in _Arlington, Texas_. Surely there was something _closer_?

"There are lots of kinds of dances," Leah says now, her voice a little prim as she helps Seth fit on yet another piece of the elaborate outfit. It is made of supple buckskin decorated in blue and gold, red and green with beads of all sizes, bells, feathers and other stitching Jasper can't even identify. "And yeah, those are CDs. They work really well for the bustle center and catch the light. Indians are pretty adaptive, you know."

"Surviving cultures usually are," Jasper observes. "They adapt or they collapse."

"Why, thank you," Leah says, grinning.

Jasper's eyebrow goes up. He'd been speaking in general, not specifically to compliment Indians, but he's amused and nods. Even two weeks ago, Leah would've gone off at length about broken treaties and native survival, but now she can make a dry joke and Jasper can acknowledge it, and neither is angry.

Unlike Seth, Leah doesn't wear anything elaborate, just old jeans and a t-shirt with a symbol that looks like a U.S. Interstate sign that reads, 'Inter-Tribal, American Indian 49.' It's Seth who will compete. "Seth's the talented one in the family," Leah says now. "Dad was a traditional dancer, but Seth learned fancy dancing from Sam." Her voice is steady as she says the name but Jasper can see the dark reds and blues of inner anger braided with sorrow. It's softer when Sam isn't present. She tries, Jasper thinks, but it's hard to be happy for someone else when one is alone and didn't used to be.

Edward is holding one of the big bustles made of feathers and ribbons and pony beads, trying to help Leah get it on Seth's back, but seems to be obstructing more than helping. Neither Leah nor Seth tell him to sit down and watch like Jasper. Edward likes playing "big brother." Physically, he's the youngest of the Cullens, even if chronologically, he's older than Emmett or Rosalie. They all call him little brother anyway. Edward wants to be "older" to _someone_, and even a werewolf will do.

When Seth is fully decked out, he explains all the pieces for Edward and Jasper. It seems that half of it once belonged to his father, including the bottom bustle which is comprised of real eagle feathers. Seth lets Leah finish his paint, then turns to Edward. "Wanna walk around with me?" Edward shrugs by way of agreement and follows him down the bleachers, out and about the stalls selling everything from jewelry and shirts to shawls and belts. Jasper covers a smile and Leah shakes her head.

"Where is he going? He doesn't like to shop at these things, and we don't know anybody here."

"There are pretty girls here," Jasper drawls. He knows his accent is back in force. It's been growing the closer they've come to Texas.

Leah frowns. "He's not likely to see any of them again."

"Sometimes that's better," Jasper points out. "And speaking of pretty girls, those boys over there are looking at you, darlin'."

She glares at him, not at the boys, one of whom wears an outfit similar to Seth's, although to Jasper's eye they all look the same and vastly different at once, colors and patterns as bright and varied as parrots. The other two boy wear t-shirts and cowboy hats but their long hair says they're native. Only one is anywhere near as dark as Leah. But looking around, he finds it hard to be certain who's Indian and who isn't. There are dancers with black hair and brown, dirty blond and even red. Some have brown skin, some pale tan, and a few appear to be _black_. There's one stately woman with graying dreads and dark teak skin wearing a beaded tiara and a bright dress. He's seen a lot who look Mexican, and at least one boy at one of the drums has features Jasper would have thought Korean before Indian. "There are a lot of different kinds of Indians," he says, offhand.

Leah shoots him an amused glance. "Well, there are more than 500 tribes in North America alone, never mind South and Central."

He smiles. "I didn't mean different tribes, although I suppose that too. I just meant that I'm used to seeing Indians who look Indian."

"What do you think an Indian looks like?" she asks, curious and half-laughing. "Irene Bedard?"

"Who's Irene Bedard?"

She grins. "Pocahontas."

"_Pocahontas?_"

"Her voice was Disney's Pocahontas, and they drew the character based on her. She's a pretty well-recognized native actress, by face if not by name, so when people think 'Indian' they're usually thinking Irene Bedard or Adam Beach or Graham Greene because that's the Hollywood native A-list."

Jasper chuckles. 'Well actually, I was thinking of people who look like you and Seth. When I was young -- before -- most Indians did."

She shakes her head. "You're talking about a long time ago, Old Man. I'm a full blood. A lot of the rez Quileute are, but we're getting rarer all the time. And some of us aren't full. Paul didn't get his green eyes from his mom." She's thoughtful a moment. "I expect that's why he's got such a temper -- he feels on the outside. I understand that as the only girl in the pack, even if I'm not a mixed blood. But being one isn't easy, especially not when you live on the rez and most of your friends are 'bloods."

Jasper chews this over. "What did the tribe think of Jacob's interest in Bella then?"

Her smile is tight. "Some weren't happy." He wonders if she's one of them. "But Bella's dad, Charlie -- he's been friends with Billy forever. He practically grew up on the rez himself, even knows a few of our words and has been invited to things outsiders usually don't participate in. So Bella's a special case. Some -- like Billy himself -- would be happy to see Jacob marry her, unite their families. And Billy's an Elder, so he's got some authority. But some wouldn't be. They think the son of an Elder oughta marry red. Others, well, it's hard to find a good red boy. Who's left for us if they all go for white girls? Our tribe's small enough as it is."

Jasper nods. Leah betrayed herself with the 'us.' He both understands and does not, empathizes and is distressed. In a post-reservation world, Indians are a fragmented people struggling to live with the fragments. "You think natives should only marry natives?" he asks. He keeps the query level, not accusatory.

"No," her answer is quick, and she looks down at her hands. "Not really. If Bella really loved Jacob . . . well, like I said, Charlie's practically one of us anyway. Being Indian isn't just about blood, Old Man -- and Bella's not just some white chick he brought home. She's Charlie's daughter. But it's . . . it's how she uses him." Leah blushes and he can _smell_ her blood close to the skin; he moves subtly away -- not because he fears biting her, but because her flush accentuates the scent of werewolf. "I know she's going to be your sister-in-law," Leah continues, "and I know Edward loves her, or thinks he does -- but I don't like how she treats Jacob. That's got nothing to do with the color of her skin except maybe how she takes things for granted because she can. She just assumes he'll be there if she needs him."

Jasper nods and waits for her to continue. He's learned to wait, with Leah. Native politeness pauses to see if the other is really finished speaking; he likes it. But right now, he's also subtly feeling her out, trying to decide if her hostility towards Bella is simple protectiveness or jealousy-driven -- he thinks she might be interested in Jacob herself -- or something else entirely.

After a pause to think, she continues, "I suppose it's . . . well, if I say I don't like Bella, that sounds petty and selfish. But if I say I wish Jacob would marry native, that's pride."

"It could also be called racism." And it's probably ironic for a Confederate soldier to be pointing that out to a colored, but he's struggled for a long time with his own racism and only learned to get past it once he acknowledged he had it. A paradox, but still true. "It's okay to be petty and selfish sometimes, Leah. We all are."

"_You're_ not." It sounds almost accusatory, but also a little admiring.

He laughs. "Oh, yes I am. When Edward first met Bella and started acting cloudy-headed all the time, I just wished he'd bite her and get it over with -- whether to change her or to eat her, I didn't much care. He was endangering us, risking our exposure. I didn't like Bella either, although I also didn't _dislike_ her. I just saw her as a complication."

"Like we saw your family. You complicated everything when you came back -- so many of you."

He nods and holds her eyes with his. "I'm sorry. My people seem to have a habit of doing that to your people." He doesn't mean vampires and werewolves.

She tilts her head. "_You mean it,_" she says, and he can feel her surprise. It is white and gold.

"Of course I do," he says. "I know being sorry doesn't fix anything, and words are just words, but I _am_ sorry."

Her smile is brilliant. "True words aren't 'just' anything, Jasper Whitlock. They have power." He doesn't miss that she uses his real name. Abruptly, she stands, hands thrust into her pockets. "Enough seriousness. Let's go see what my brother and yours are up to, ennit?"

He stands with her, but eyes all their stuff. "Should we just leave this . . . ?"

She points to the blanket she'd earlier laid on the bleachers. "Nobody will bother it. They'll know this seat's taken."

"But Seth's costume -- "

She laughs. "_Regalia,_ Old Man! It's _regalia_, not a costume! And nobody's gonna touch it. Come on."

By the time they catch up to Seth and Edward, Edward has already purchased jewelry for Bella, Rosalie and Esme, and a (fake) bearclaw necklace for Emmett. "I figured I'd leave Alice to you," he tells Jasper. "But I don't know what to get Carlisle."

"How about a pipe?" Seth suggests. Leah just stares at her brother as if she can't believe he said that. He drops his chin, looking mulish. "Well, Carlisle made the treaty, and enforces it, and he's a healer, too, even if it's white medicine." Leah still stares. "It doesn't have to be ceremonial!"

Jasper glances at Edward, who is frowning, apparently following what they're thinking, not just what they're saying or the irritation Leah is feeling, and Seth's embarrassment. "Maybe it wouldn't be a good idea -- " Edward starts, but abruptly Leah waves a hand.

"No, go ahead. Seth . . . has a point. Carlisle made the treaty and he's kept his word."

None of them add, 'So far' -- or mention Bella. If Edward turns Bella, it will break the treaty. Even if they go away to turn her, and by her own choice, Jasper isn't sure that'll matter. He remembers what Leah said a minute ago about true words having power. Breaking true words went beyond mere legalities -- jots and tiddles. He wonders if they can renegotiate the treaty or make an exception since this will be _Bella's_ choice? If true words are true because of spirit, then they convey _meaning_ not literalism, and shouldn't be imprisoned by those jots and tiddles. Jasper thinks his family will be breaking the treaty if they take Bella away to change her in order not to break the treaty. Better to violate the letter of it in order to maintain its spirit by not avoiding it. It is, he thinks, _complicated_. But most true things are.

"Buying Dr. Fang a souvenir pipe," Leah says now, "isn't the same thing as making him a pipe carrier. It's not like he's gonna smoke it."

'Dr. Fang'? Jasper suppresses amusement, wondering if Carlisle's heard that one yet. But now he understands her reluctance. Before his reading, he wouldn't have, but to bear a ceremonial pipe is an honoring, one that has to be granted. It's understandable if the wolves would be reluctant to grant it to Carlisle, even now.

Edward looks at her a minute more, then nods, as if satisfied. "Okay, if you don't think it would be . . . offensive."

"Not for this," she says, then her smile turns sly. "Besides, you'll be supporting a native artist. Get the red pipestone. I like it better than black."


	10. We're the People Let's All Dance

**10. We're the people; Let's All Dance**

They are laughing as they stop the Mustang finally -- because they've run out of road. A wall of Oklahoma brush confronts them, black in the darkness.

"Did you see that guy's face when Edward threw him through the window?" Seth crows, slapping Edward's back. Edward is looking more embarrassed than anything.

"That was an accident."

"I can't believe we got out of there before the cops came, or somebody got seriously hurt," Leah says, opening the passenger door so she can get out (or fall out, really; she's sore). Her brother follows. "I don't want to see that bar owner's repair bill."

The Cullen boys are looking sheepish. "Well, um, I sorta left something," Edward says. "On the way out." Jasper shoots him a worried look. "It was cash!" Edward protests. "And the guy behind the bar was hiding. He never saw me."

Leah shakes her head, but is also, oddly, comforted. The wanton destruction of property has always bothered her -- maybe because she's never had that much property to begin with. Even in Hollywood summer blockbusters that she knows are fake, the blown up buildings and wrecked cars of heart-pumping action scenes excite her less than disturb her. She can't help thinking, "Who's going to pay for that?" Only Sam ever understood her conscientious streak. And Emily.

And look what happened there.

She isn't laughing now, and heads toward the trunk, holding up a hand in a wordless request for Jasper's keys. He tosses them to her and she opens it. They retrieve the tent and other camping equipment. Jasper collects his guitar. They will sleep a little, let the excitement die down, then get back on the road. They have to make it to Dallas-Ft. Worth by noon tomorrow. But Jasper and Edward need to eat and eat well because tomorrow they will be in a crowd of tasty humans, not just a pair of werewolves who they swear smell as appetizing as old, wet hiking boots. But first, they set up the tent, or rather Jasper does while Edward and Seth start a small fire. It's for ambience, not heat. Even if it wasn't August in Oklahoma, neither vampires nor werewolves would need it. Leah just watches. Her fist hurts. She might have a good right hook, but that doesn't mean she doesn't bruise her knuckles when she uses it.

Seth sees her fiddling with the hand and comes over to inspect the scraped skin. She's noticed both Jasper and Edward keep their distance. Werewolf she might be, but she's not entirely sure they wouldn't want to eat her anyway if they got a good whiff of fresh blood. "You should phase," Seth says. "You'll heal faster."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "In case you didn't notice, you're all men and I'm not eager to strip down to my underwear, thanks."

Seth rolls his eyes. "I'm your brother, Jasper's married, and Edward's as good as married. We're not going to be _ogling_ you. Gross."

Somewhere behind them in the half-raised tent, she hears Jasper laugh. "It's a brother's job," he calls, "to make his sister feel attractive."

"If you want to phase, we'll look away," Edward assures her.

Truth is, she does want to phase. Tired and sore or not, she's still full of adrenaline from the fight. A good run would be good for her. "Fine," she stands up and grabs the bottom of her t-shirt, yanking it up.

Edward whips his head to the side and shuts his eyes. "A little warning next time!" Seth has turned his back and Jasper is still hidden inside the tent.

She wiggles out of her jeans and then strips off her underwear, carrying it all a little ways into the brush. Sandy dirt, leaves, sticks and even a sandspur prick her soles. "Ow, ow," she mutters. She hopes she doesn't step on anything that'll sting, or bite. It doesn't matter if her werewolf genes would allow her to survive and heal from it; it would still hurt.

She phases quickly and dashes through the surrounding woods for a bit before trotting back to the boys, sitting next to Seth in his camp chair. The tent is up now and Jasper has out his guitar while Edward idly tosses small sticks into the small blaze. With his hat on, and boots and guitar, Jasper really does look the Texas rancher he once was, Leah thinks. He plays quietly, picking something with his fingers, but doesn't sing. She heard him sing earlier and if he's hardly horrible -- being a vampire would preclude that -- his pitch isn't certain or consistent. She prefers the soft plunk of strings anyway. It's soothing and she settles down, head on paws, letting her body repair itself. In the open air, even in wolf form, the presence of the vampires isn't troubling her. Familiarity in this case has bred tolerance rather than contempt.

Except for the music and the sound of the fire, it is quiet in the dark. Animals are keeping their distance, sensing predators more deadly than the usual humans. Abruptly, Jasper stops playing and they all look at him. He is staring into the fire, wearing an odd expression. Edward leans forward, face interested. "That's new," he says. He must be listening in on Jasper's thoughts and Leah wonders why that doesn't annoy Jasper more. She'd told Edward, on the first day of their trip, to stay the hell out of her head. She thinks he's honored it, mostly.

"What's knew?" Seth asks.

"A memory." Jasper looks up. He is smiling. "A human memory I'd forgotten."

"I thought you guys didn't forget anything?" Seth looks to Edward.

"We don't forget what happens to us as vampires, no. Although sometimes, when we grow as old as Carlisle, or the Volturi, there is such a weight of experience we have to dig around a little, like looking in a cluttered closet." He smiles. "But our human lives -- those tend to grow dim. Do you recall your childhood? Or life in the womb? Most people have a hard time remembering much before adolescence, and certainly much before the age of four, due to subsequent brain development. Your brain changes, not just your body, as you mature."

This, Leah thinks, is the two-time medical student talking. Bella told Jacob that Edward and one of his sisters had gone to medical school to help keep their father current.

"When vampires change, our whole physiology changes, including the brain. If we have superior recall afterwards, we also tend to forget what happened before unless we focus on remembering, or somebody helps us remember. Just like people may 'remember' certain events from their childhood, but it's because they hear adults describe those events over and over."

Seth has listened with interest. As with Leah, his teachers say he has a good mind, but it's hard for an Indian boy to find incentive to study in white school. Seth assumes he'll grow up and help run the fish hatchery, like their father before him. Leah thinks he could do more if he wanted to, just like she'd once wanted to -- planned to do -- herself. Then again, given their biology, do they have any choice? She breathes out heavily, a doggy sigh, and rises abruptly to walk over and look at Jasper. She can feel their little fire hot on her back's fur, and tries to . . . think at . . . Edward. _Please ask him what the memory was._

"She wants to know what you remembered," Edward obediently translates. It's the first time she's found his mind reading useful, although she supposes it was useful in the storm. He knew there was an overpass ahead of them down the road.

Smiling, Jasper reaches out as if to pet her, then hesitates. She bumps his hand with her nose to say it's all right. He strokes her ears. He still smells bad, but the wind is coming from the south and blowing the scent away. "I saw a friend," he says, "who I'd forgot I'd had. His name was William Tyler, but we called him Wild Willie because he was -- wild. Craziest bastard I've ever known -- human or vampire -- and the funniest."

"Worse than Emmett?" Edward asks.

"Actually, he's probably why I put up with Emmett," Jasper replies. He's quiet again a moment, then continues, speaking as if drawing up memories long buried, "He put an armadillo in the lieutenant colonel's saddlebags once. I'm not sure who was madder, the armadillo or the colonel." They all laugh.

"Trouble was, Willie was under my command -- or he was supposed to be. He pretty much did whatever the hell he wanted and I tried to sweep it under the rug because he _was_ my friend." Jasper frowned. "It was a hard war; he kept us laughing. That's a gift." Jasper's dark gold eyes haze and he's not with them anymore, but somewhere in the past. Leah doesn't want to disturb him. This is, she thinks, important.

After a moment passes, Edward says, more softly, "Tell them about the bar brawl."

Jasper shakes himself a little and takes his hat off, turns it in his hands. It's flattened his wavy hair around the crown. "One night before the Battle of Galveston, my whole company was on leave, so I and some of my officers, including Willie, who was a first lieutenant, headed to a saloon in town that was known for, er" -- he coughed -- "ladies of a certain persuasion."

"Prostitutes!" Seth crows -- needlessly. Leah rolls her eyes and moves back over beside her brother. The wind has changed, overwhelming her with the full scent of vampire.

"Yes, well -- we were soldiers away from home," Jasper explains. "We paid well. This particular evening, everything seemed to be going according to plan until some of the locals showed up and objected a girl we were entertaining. It wasn't even Willie's girl. But because we were officers, and young, and had a little cash -- at least at that point -- we were more appealing than the local boys who'd been kept out of the army due to age or infirmity. In short, if you can have the fellow with two good legs, both eyes and all ten fingers, why settle for the local middle-aged cowboy missing half his teeth and an eye?

"This fellow wanted the girl that . . . Jeff -- that was his name, Jeffrey Riggins -- this fellow wanted the girl Jeff had spoken for and tried to start something. Willie picked up his chair and broke it over the fellow's shoulders and that was it. We tore that place up." Jasper smiles again. "Probably not something to be smiling about but I admit, it was fun, raising hell with Willie. We looked worse after that bar brawl than we did after the Battle of Galveston -- though that's probably because the battle was naval."

He stops again. "It's funny. I haven't remembered any of them since . . . since I've been a vampire. Now, I wonder how I forgot?"

_He's becoming more human. _ Leah hears the voice in her head; it's unexpected and she starts, tries to cover it by licking her shoulder. _I don't know what you did -- how you helped him remember -- but thank you,_ Edward continues. _Jasper and Alice have always had the fewest human memories. We understand why, but it's been hard, for them and for us. So thank you. You've given him back something of himself._


	11. Jasper Hampton Whitlock

**11. Jasper Hampton Whitlock**

Sunday morning, for the first time on their trip, Leah insists on taking the driver's seat. She knows where she's going, she says. Edward and Seth elect to stay in Dallas. The Dallas-Ft. Worth area is sprawling with much to see on a cloudy day, Edward explains, but Jasper's suspicions have been rising throughout the trip and he can feel Leah's nervousness now. When he asks questions, she won't give him a straight answer except to say that Alice had assured her, before they'd even left, that it would be overcast in east Texas on Sunday. So when they catch I-45 off I-30 and head south, he's not surprised. They're headed for Houston, of course.

He hasn't been back since he was changed. Maria hadn't advised it, and he'd seen no reason to argue with her. Why go back to the place he'd been a weak and gullible human? Even after he'd left Maria, he hadn't returned despite Alice's prodding, and isn't sure he wants to go back now.

Of course, he doesn't _have_ to. Leah couldn't force him, and he doubts she'd try if he told her he honestly doesn't want to return. Even if she were inclined to push it, Alice would have warned her off. Not that Alice could see her intentions, but they'd apparently talked about it, and Alice must have seen that he'd at least entertain the possibility, and he is entertaining it - because it's Leah. For all her cynical posturing, Leah is still a child with a child's hopefulness and desire to please others for the sheer joy of pleasing, even while basing her ideas of what _would_ please on what would please her. Leah is rooted in family and place; to be without either strikes her as tragic, and for him to say he has the Cullens isn't enough. She knows he orbits them like an electron, present but not part of the central nexus. He has always thought that was enough. He has Alice; she is his Foundation of Being, but he's come to realize there's room for more. Likewise, Leah lost a father, and if he knows she's not seeking a replacement precisely, she is seeking something. He never had a daughter - never thought he'd want one. He finds that he does, and finally understands Carlisle. There are many ways to love.

On the trip, Leah is more inclined to obey the speed limit, so it takes them about three-and-a-half hours in the light traffic of an early Sunday to reach the urban jewel of Houston. This was his hometown, but he doesn't recognize it. When he'd been born, Harris County had counted barely 2000 souls and President Houston of the Republic of Texas had just ordered the capital moved back there from Austin. At the time of his change and the outbreak of war, Houston had grown to twice that size. The 1860 census gave a population of 4,845. Unfortunately, Jasper knows these things only because one of his degrees is in U.S. history with a focus on Texas. He _has_ been back to Texas itself, of course - just never to Houston.

Until today. Today Jasper Hampton Whitlock, former Major in the Confederate Army, 11th Battalion, Texas Volunteers, has come home.

As they leave the interstate, Leah consults what appears to be a printout of directions from MapQuest. "Where are we going?" he asks for perhaps the twentieth time. She seems to have a specific destination in mind besides just Houston, and he doubts it's his old ranch. That would have been sold long, long ago to land developers. It's probably under a suburb by this point.

"You'll see," she says. It's maddening, but he lets it drop. She's enjoying being mysterious.

Where she takes them is a cemetery. Perhaps he should've guessed that, but didn't. There are a mix of old graves and new here, and they park near the older section. She has a different map in hand now - one she had to have gotten from either a historical society or the groundskeeper, because it's marked in sections with numbers that reference names on another sheet. He doesn't look too closely, fearing what he'll find, even while he's both impressed and touched by the trouble she's obviously gone to. She researched this; it wasn't just an idle idea.

She leads him over to a section near the western fence under a copse of trees where the oldest graves are located, most with stones carved from local limestone, dirty-white and weathered almost beyond legibility. She stops in front of one that is different from the rest - Bear Mountain red granite from central Texas, rare and unusual. Time and the roots of the old chestnut oak nearby have raised the base so the upright part tilts drunkenly. (And how does he know what sort of oak it is? But he knows.) A southern magnolia stands a little further away, branching high with wide, waxy green leaves. The white flowers - as big as his palm - are gone, wilted in late summer heat. But he remembers how they smell - the wet, drifting scent, heavy like germinating life. It reminds him of Alice. There is no scent like magnolias, he thinks.

The expense of the stone aside, the marker is simple**:** an obelisk above (the leaning part) with writing along the base. Because the stone is good, the writing is still clear enough and he squats down to read it - his rank, full name, the year of his birth, the year of his (presumed) death, and a carved image of a cannon and cannonballs.

Amazingly, Leah Clearwater has found his grave - or at least his cenotaph; there's no corpse inside. He wonders who of his family she roped into helping her. Perhaps nobody. Leah likes doing things on her own, and she's certainly intelligent enough to figure it out. Even more, she has the perseverance. Jasper has decided that success in life is one part smarts to two parts sheer, dogged cussedness.

Leah is examining the other graves around his. "Lots of Whitlocks," she says, "although it's hard to read their names."

Standing again, he turns away. Looking at his own gravestone is a bit unnerving and he can feel his non-functioning stomach roiling. He focuses on not broadcasting that to Leah. Instead, he looks at the other graves, struggling for detachment. There are indeed a lot of Whitlocks, as she said, but the name on one stone arrests him. He stops dead. LIZA ANNE HAMPTON WHITLOCK, BELOVED MOTHER AND WIFE, 1822 - 1873. "That's my mother," he says. "That's my mother." Leah comes over to stand beside him.

Abruptly he must turn away. If he could cry, he would, but he can't. He just shakes. Leah leaves him be. He doesn't recall much about her now, his mother, but he remembers her voice, low and husky. He remembers that she smelled like vanilla and lye soap, and that her hair was blonde, like his. But until today, he hasn't been able to recall her first name, or that his middle had been her maiden. In records, she was only, stubbornly, "Mrs. Hugh G. Whitlock."

"Liza Anne," he says aloud, and it sounds like his father's voice when he'd come in for supper. 'Liza Anne! What's cook got ready for the table? My belly's starting to think my throat's cut!' Then he'd kiss her and laugh. He'd been half-again her age, but that hadn't been uncommon then; he'd loved her, his Texas rose.

Jasper turns back to his mother's grave, and his father's beside it. "These are my parents." It's ripped out of him in a voice he barely recognizes. "_These_ are my parents." He walks down the row. His grave is the nicest. Theirs - not so much, just simple limestone. He can read the names only because he knows them. They rise from his memory like ghosts, sparked by the faint outlines. The war must have ruined his family like it had ruined so many others. They'd spent all their money to honor their son, the war hero . . . but he wasn't a hero. He feels gutted. "This is my family. Mary Carol - that's my little sister. She must have . . . Oh, God, she married Willie! She married _Willie_! These are their kids. They named one Jasper. He died young too - only eight."

He can't take any more. He runs away at vampire speed. There is no one here today and he runs until he faces the opposite fence far on the other side of the cemetery. He wants Alice. But he knows this is something he needs to do alone. He'll bring Alice here later. He'll tell her all about his family. But here, today, he must do this without her. Here, today, Jasper Hale peels like a husk, opening until he finds himself. He leans against the fence and sobs even if no tears come. This is loss. This is grief. He hasn't known it for over a century, not really. He mourns for his human family at last.

Leah doesn't follow him. She must know he'll come back eventually, and he does. She's sitting there in front of the graves. While he was gone, she cleaned them all up, every one he'd pointed to. Each has a small, square calico bag at the base of it - all but his. She has extras and points to them. "I'm not sure if I missed any."

"What are those?" he asks. His voice cracks.

"Tobacco ties, for the ancestors, our relatives." Reaching up, she holds a small tin. "That's your earth. The soil from your home. Keep it with you; it grounds you."

He takes it. "Thank you," he says.

They don't stay much longer. He's paid his respects, and the dead have reminded him of who he is. He doesn't come from no where. Maria tried to cut him off from his humanity, she taught him to despise it, but today he's found it and he makes a vow to himself on his mother's grave that he'll never again taste human blood. Suddenly it seems a lot easier to believe he can keep it. Despite his empathy, he lacked true motivation before. His ability to feel the fear of his victims had only made him depressed, and he understands at last how Edward can turn away from Bella. Instinct is strong, it's true, like anger and vengeance. But love is stronger. Jasper will do this for his families - the one he was born into, the one who adopted him, and the (small) one he has found on this journey.

He and Leah leave the graveside holding hands. Hers lies trusting in his, her palm too hot. His is too cold. But where their skin meets, it's just right.

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**STORY ENDNOTES:**

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Feedback is adored, as always. If you read this and enjoyed it, please feed the writer. :-)

**There is, now, a sequel called "The Star Quilt,"** which continues the story of Leah, bringing Alice more into the mix, as well as Jasper, and gives Leah her happy ending. It's available on this site.

_Cowboys & Indians_, along with "The Way I See It" and "In a Motel 6 on Highway 5, After the 49s" are the most distinctly "native" of the stories I've done in fanfic, albeit in different ways. _Cowboys & Indians_ represents the traditional non-linear style of native storytelling. Obviously, not all native storytelling follows such a pattern, but a fair amount does, and it occasionally causes problems for non-native readers used to a more Western-European (Shakespearean) storytelling methodology. In native storytelling, events or scenes might be linked in ways other than chronology (ranging from scene theme to connecting symbols) and generally build towards a unified thematic point. Thus the reader, like Jasper, is introduced to native perspectives.

I have tried to insert most explanations of things within the story itself. All the quotes are fairly well attributed, I think, except the song lyrics, which come from the classic Steppenwolf tune of the same title as the chapter in which they appear. Yes, there's a vague _Firefly_ reference in here, and the reference to the Beats is for Jackson Rathbone, who's apparently a fan. Regarding Hank Snow ... the (Southern/rural) colloquialism: "(let's) pull a Hank Snow ..." means to leave , e.g., to be 'movin' on,' after his famous country song.

On Jasper and philosophy, Alice says in _New Moon _that he studied it at Cornell, although it's hard to know if that was just for something new or represents a long-term interest. I decided to assume the latter. We do know he likes to read. Leah's reference to an "NDN Kar" is a glancing reference to the running reservation joke about Indian cars, as well as to the Keith Secola song of the same name. Regarding Jasper's family history, we really aren't told a lot in _Eclipse_; I've taken what we were told and expanded on it, based on Houston/Texas history. There is a small bow to Bratanimus' Jasper story in here. I also expanded on werewolf ability to hear minds. This is pure speculation on my part. If the pack can hear each other, and Edward has a special talent, I speculated that they might be able to hear him too.

Jasper's one-time mental use of "colored" is intentional; in his day and age, "colored" could mean both black _or_ native.


End file.
